3M Ergonomic Mouse, Optical, USB/PS2 Compatible, Large Size, Black (EM500GPL)
by 3M
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List Price: Our Price: $49.69 You Save: $50.30 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $44.65 (click here) Category: Office Product See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of 3M Ergonomic Mouse, Optical, USB/PS2 Compatible, Large Size, Black (EM500GPL)
Customer Review: Best of breed
Summary: 5 Stars
True, it does not have a scroll wheel. There are utilities you can download that will make the third button work as a scroll wheel.
But it is best of breed for a few reasons.
One, it allows your hand to assume the most vertical position of all the ergonomic mice (mouses?). The natural position for your hand is the so-called "handshake" position, with the palm facing toward the other hand, and the knuckles positioned vertically. The Renaissance Mouse allows the most vertical position of all the ergonomic mice.
Two, it has a base to take the weight of your hand and arm. With the other ergonomic mice, your hand rests directly on the mouse pad, meaning you have to use your bicep muscles to lift your hand off the pad. With the Renaissance Mouse, the base takes the weight, and you can use your arm muscles just to move the mouse.
True, there is a learning curve, and it takes a while, perhaps a week or two to accustom yourself to it. Also, it is a little less fast and accurate, at least for me, than the regular mice, since you are using the the larger and less accurate arm muscles instead of the small wrist muscles.
But for me, it works great. No more wrist pain or numbness, even after a 14-hour day at the computer.
I did have a problem intially with the cursor jumping and stuttering, but that turned out to be a problem with the mouse pad. The optical sensor was apparently confused by the hexagonal pattern etched into the pad (that came included with Dell computers a few years ago.) It caused me to intially write a not-so-positive review of the optical model, since my older rolling-ball model had no such problem. But switching the pad resolved the issue.
Some people have complained about durability, but I have dropped both of mine, optical and roller ball, many times without any problems.
I love mine.
Customer Review: Good idea, needs improvement, awkward scrolling
Summary: 2 Stars
I have tried to use this mouse for about a week now. I am running it at the same time as my Logitech wheel mouse that I was trying not to use because of the horizontal hand position.
Pros: The 3M mouse has a good hand position.
Cons: The 3M mouse has awkward scrolling (I don't know how people deal with non-wheel-based scrolling while Web surfing with any mouse). When I use the 3M mouse, I find myself scrolling with the keyboard instead, definitively a major drawback since my arrow keys are on the same right hand. The 3M mouse software does not produce any of the advertized extra scrolling features for the lower second-finger button in Windows XP. The movement seems to require lifting the mouse when it wanders into a corner, which is harder and heavier to do than a conventional mouse. It is hard to get back to the keyboard (same for all vertical mice but this one has a tall stick to lift over).
Other opinions: I am not convinced that left and right clicking should be done with one digit (3M uses the thumb which I find less accurate than a finger and more tiring). Their advice to have your forearm on the very deep desk goes against other ergonomic advice I have gotten, especially the Deborah Quilter books. I believe it would be hard to use with detailed mouse work like Photoshop.
Advice: get the small mouse if you have a hand width on the edge (3.5 inches I think) of their guide.
Summary: try it, but like me you may find yourself grabbing for the old wheel-based mouse instead. I will return it but don't know if I'll buy the smaller presumeably better-fitting 3M mouse. This mouse has made me appreciate my old mouse more.
Customer Review: Works OK, but this isn't for me.
Summary: 4 Stars
I used this mouse for several days before deciding it wasn't for me.
While it does alleviate wrist pain, it didn't perform up to my expectations.
The software (which you need to download from 3M) is five years old and is not a driver update. The mouse uses the standard drivers included in Windows. I was unable to use the 3M software because it conflicted with the Logitech software I already have installed. I use two mice simultaneously-one for my left hand and one for my right (sounds crazy, but it works really well for balancing the work load). Consequently, I needed to keep the Logitech software.
Since I was unable to use any software to modify the control of the mouse, I found I had to move my arm excessively to move the cursor. Left to right was annoying enough (I have a 20" Dell WS LCD monitor-lots of real estate to cover), but trying to go up and down was a real bear. I expect to be able to move the cursor with just the movement of my wrist and fingers-not my arm.
Another issue was price. The quality and lack of features on this mouse is something I would expect from a mouse costing $10-$15, but I realize this is a "specialty" item.
All things considered, I give this mouse a 4 because it does what it says. I felt no pain in my wrist while using this mouse. However, I normally don't have a lot of wrist pain-I just get fatigued after a day of use-so it wasn't worth it to me. I think it probably is a good product for someone having a lot of pain and using only one mouse ;-)
Customer Review: Superb mouse! Actually works. Solid design.
Summary: 5 Stars
The 3m Ergo mouse is the best mouse for ergonomics on the market. The picture is misleading though. I thought that perhaps it was some sort of joystick type of mouse (which would still require moving the wrist, which wouldn't help really). It is one solid piece that does NOT move at all. The picture also hides the fact that it has 3 buttons, a left click (on top for the thumb), a right click (also on top), and one on the side (not shown) for the other fingers.
What you'll immediately notice about this is that when you start to use it, your wrist will not move at all and you will be using your arm to move the mouse.
I have no problems with the mouse treating a single click as a double click either. Perhaps the other people simply had a defective unit (or more likely, 3M was producing it poorly has revised their design to have it fixed).
In my own experiment with this mouse, I intentionally did NO other therapy for my wrist to see how much the mouse actually helped. My hand went from nearly totally unusable to not having hardly any pain (unless I use a regular mouse again, and/or type for extended experiods again) in less than 20 days. Clearly, healing has already started, and it's also happened in less than 1 month with this mouse.
For people that play first person shooters, I also use this mouse for games with no problem at all. And it took me about 1-2 days to get used to it. It's very "natural". Highly recommended.
Customer Review: Absolutely the best mouse alternative
Summary: 5 Stars
If your wrist is bothering you (or you don't want to risk that) and you are using a "normal" style mouse, you may wish to consider switching to this SPECIFIC mouse alternative! This specific "mouse" is better than the trackball type alternatives in that you don't have to keep flexing your thumb all the time. While using this mouse, your wrist and fingers all stay stationary - only your elbow is slightly changing to push it around. The weight of your hand is comfortably on the lower side of the hand which rests right on the mouse itself (so your hand never touches the desk). A right or left mouse click is performed by a very slight movement of the thumb up or down.
I got this mouse at work and immediately liked it so much that I bought one for myself at home too.
Switching to this mouse brought total relief to my wrist!
The only drawback is very minor - there is no scroll wheel - however there *is* a scroll wheel button that behaves like pressing down on the scroll wheel on a mouse. I use Mozilla/Firefox for my browser, and this "button" is fantastic to open a link into a new browser tab! The "button" is on the "handle" itself, so to "press" it you simply squeeze in your middle and fourth fingers slightly! Brilliant design.
I highly recommend this mouse (remember there is a LARGE and MEDIUM size to choose between though - and this is designed for use with your RIGHT hand)